Dosage Help

Hi All!

Quick summary of myself in dot points:

• First episode of psychosis in may 2013
• stayed on medication for 6 months after (olanzapine and abilify)
• stopped taking for 8 months until I had my second episode of psychosis
• 2nd episode came out of no-where - not much stress, not too bad sleep and no other drugs to trigger (so i guess im quite vulnerable??)
• Currently taking 10mg of Abilify

My question is how much I should take... I understand that 10mg is probably already low in the first place but I still want to lower to 5mg just to reduce the side effects like anxiety and restlessness that comes at times... I will speak to the pDoc but would love to hear all your thoughts on the manner!

5mg should be enough... right?
Also, im curious how long term is taking the medication... i understand its different for everyone but something tells me that because i've had two episodes that I may need to take it forever - this doesn't daunt me and i accept what has happened but would prefer to be off it in the long term if possible...

I wish they can scan our DNA and determine how much our body needs at the minimum :P

Thankyou all in advance!

For me I was originally on 10mg but was stable on 7.5mg for a year 5mg was far too low for me at 1 year post psychosis..I was really irritated and anxious. For psychosis the minimum dose is 10mg if you can go lower then great but there is no guarantee it will be protective. The lower doses are meant to be used in addition to other drugs for depression.

As far as being on meds forever I don't know if you've seen the wunderink study but people who go off meds at 6 months do tend to relapse more and you do need to treat the relapse but in terms of long term prognosis 7 years out they do better off meds than on. You don't mention a tapering period but you need to taper off these meds with a doctors help or you increase the chance of relapse. Anyway...I might give it one more try maybe after a year or two on meds...8 months off is great.

Thanks sometimes! Did you notice much of difference between 10mg and 7.5mg??? pDoc is happy for me to go down to that... curious why you were on 10mg and then went down to 7.5mg - any more info will be of great help to mt psychosis recovery journey!

thanks in advance

So it was my first break and we tried to taper after a year to see if I was ok...pdoc initially tapered to half the dose ie 5mg it was just too fast...I had trouble with anxiety...ie running out of movies etc because I was so nervous....really wanting to yell at people I was so irritated. So I took a chance and went back up not all the way but half the way to 7.5mg....a year after that once I was more confidant we continued the taper to 5, 2.5 and finally zero.

For me with 7.5 I had less Parkinson's and less restlessness...I always needed to be doing something on 10mg I could just relax on 7.5mg.....so 7.5mg was just as effective but fewer side effects for me. It took longer for me to start tapering again because cutting from 10 to 5 I didn't know if we had simply tapered too fast or if I might relapse so I just waited to start again.

For the restlessness, it sounds like some akathisia. U could ask ur doctor for meds to help with that, like congentin, inderal or benadryl.

Thanks to you all!